Welcome 2010!

New year, new garden, fresh starts. Nice to have a clean slate. I'm planning away on the garden. I'm going to rotate the directions my rows go. Last year they ran East to West. Everything did all right but I think I may get more stuff in my garden if I do a North/South row that is shorter. I'm still planning on running my beans and peas along the fence that runs East/West though. Just on my North fence so they don't block the sun.

So here's my basic list of what I think I want in the garden this year:

Tomatoes: Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, and maybe an Amish Paste?
Tomatillos
Carrots: Chantenay and Danvers Half Long
Potatoes: Haven't picked varieties yet, but at least one fingerling type
Zuchinni: Green, Yellow didn't do so hot last year
Pumpkin: I have a sweet pie pumpkin seed but also I've composted several pumpkins that may or may not sprout on their own. I had a small decorative pumpkin come up last year this way. Obviously my compost doesn't get very hot.
Peppers: Haven't decided here yet either, but will do plants instead of from seed
Cucumber: Have Straight Eight and National Pickling
Lettuce: I like the mix of leaf lettuces
Onions: WallaWallas and red (I planted the reds last fall. We'll see what we get)
Beans: Kentucky Blues and Bush Blue Lakes
Peas: Mix of sugar and snow peas along with some regular shelling
Beets: Detroit Red
Turnips: Purple Top

I'm debating radishes with my carrots. I just don't know how many we'll eat. I also have lots of herbs I want to put in. I just haven't decided if they will go in my veggie garden or elsewhere around the property. In addition to the herbs Tom would like me to put in some hops. This way he may start brewing beer. That would be kinda fun. We have the cellar for it, and I can put the hops around the garage or along our fence. I haven't decided which yet. Also, I'm debating brussels sprouts and cabbage. Both take up lots of room and we don't eat that many of them. Plus my brussels sprouts didn't mature until almost Dec. Maybe a corner of the garden where they can just be ignored for the summer. They were delicious, but didn't yield much.

Anyone have any luck with copper to deter slugs? Beer traps work well, but I always forget to refresh the beer so they get really gross and the slugs quit going in.

Planning and thinking

I was just reading one of my garden books and realized as I put it down that I planted daffodils and tulips that should come up in the spring! Also, I have irises that should bloom again. I can't wait to see what all comes up this year. I spread lots of random flower seeds around the house and along the new fence. It will be fun to see how many hollyhocks and others come up around the fence posts. Also with some of my amazon.com gift certificate (Christmas present thanks to Ginna) I ordered some tomato seeds. Brandywine, Black Krim, and Cherokee Purple. I'll also end up getting some paste tomatoes for drying and making paste, but they can wait. I think that and some different kind of potatoes will be all the seed I have to get this year. I still have tons from last year. Although, now that I think about it I may not have zucchini seeds. Not sure what happened to them. Guess I'll add that to the list.

End of 2008

Well, I harvested the brussels sprouts a week or so ago. They were frozen right on the plant and I harvested in several inches of snow. I didn't even wash them. (Beauty of knowing exactly what wasn't put on them.) Just plopped 'em in a casserole dish laid the last 4 pieces of bacon in the package that needed used up over the top and tossed them in the oven. At somewhere around 300 degrees F. I baked them for awhile. I basically forgot about them until I got the rest of dinner going and realized I could smell the bacon. Opened up the oven and mmmm... Poor little brussels didn't even make it to dinner. I ate them all up. Just a handful is what I got but they sure were good. There were two more plants but they never could seem to muster sprouts. Don't know if they didn't get enough to eat or what. Oh well.

We've had our cold snap, snow, and now it is raining. While it snowed the other day I started planning next year's garden. I'll try to be a bit more disciplined this year. I'm going to try to not totally cover my shelves in seedlings. If nothing else because Bear will probably pull them up. I'll have to enlist his help this upcoming year outside. He loves to play outside and helping me in the garden will be the perfect excuse. Not yet two should still be plenty old enough to play in the dirt with Mom. Hopefully he'll still enjoy all the peas and tomatoes straight from the garden next summer. I never could get a basket of tomatoes in without Bear-bites out of at least one tomato, if not two or three tomatoes. I think he was what they call quality control.

Speaking of tomatoes, I want to try several different varieties. Brandywine, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, and a paste tomato are on my list. I wonder what a good paste variety would be... I haven't really heard anything one way or another. If only I can keep myself under control when obtaining seeds this year. I want to go more the heirloom route with most of my veggies. Mostly because of the history behind them. I like the idea that I can grow something my great-grandmother would recognize.

Off to build more wish-lists for spring...

Been awhile

The garden is basically done. I still have brussels sprouts out there that I'm hoping might mature enough to eat in spite of the cold weather. Most of the leaves are raked into the garden and all the flowers have been killed by the snow and freezing weather. I did get a few days of 60 degree weather to plant my garlic, daffodils, and tulips right after our first snow. Of course we haven't see snow since then either. Probably good though since we still have needed to get chores done. I could still stand to mulch around the place and my friend and I need to clean out the chicken coop before it gets too cold. We both want the poop to mellow in the beds over the winter.

That's about it. I'm slowly starting to think gardening and picking out seeds again, but after the crazy tomato canning I'm ready for the break.:) Funny how late winter excitment can turn to the late summer exhaustion. Sure has been nice having our own canned tomatoes and salsa though.

Freeze

Let's see...I haven't been very good about keeping this up. I'm trying to remember when our actual first frost date was. I'm thinking about the 25th of Sept. for frost and then we froze solid about the 5th of Oct. Woke up to and inch and a half of snow on the 9th and it has stayed either below or very close to freezing all weekend. Garden is all done. I missed getting my garlic, daffodils, and tulips in though. I'll have to see if we get a bit of a warm up I'll get the flowers in at least. I might even be able to work the garlic in if I do the south facing bed. We'll see.

I had a bumper crop of tomatoes. My squash didn't do so hot, my peppers finally started producing well about a week before they froze, my broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach bolted, my beans froze, my peas did well, as did my potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, and onion. Things grew but just didn't do as well as they maybe should have. My brussels sprouts were just really getting going when the snow hit. They still might be okay, but I haven't had the gumption to go check. I'm ready for winter as far as the garden goes. I'll be ready for the snow to go away I'm sure come Feb. but for now I'm ready to put the garden to bed for a few months.

Spiders in the garden...

Harvest

I haven't really been able to update this since I've been super busy trying to get the harvest in and preserved. I have salsa, stewed tomatoes, ketchup, apple butter, apple sauce, and will soon start in on the plum recipes. Still have tomatoes to finish too. Then hopefully the brussels sprouts will come on soon. Then I can go to freezing them. The saurkraut failed, but we'll get it one of these days.

I have some cool orb spiders in the garden now. I'll post photos later. I feel bad because I keep knocking one of them out of her web. So far she keeps coming back but I don't know how long that will go on if I continue to disturb her. Even if I don't mean to.